Anton Zingarevich identified Reading’s early transfer activity as key to the club’s pre-season tour of Portugal.

Reading are now back from their 10-day spell in the Algarve, where six of their seven new recruits linked up with manager Brian McDermott’s squad.

Russian owner Zingarveich also spent time with the group and the 30-year-old saw for himself how the Premier League squad was shaping up.

“I discussed it with Brian, the key was to get everybody in before the trip to Portugal and we managed to achieve that,” said the multimillionaire and former Bearwood College pupil.

“We have added quality to our squad, we already had a good group, but we have added a little extra to strengthen it.

“There is healthy competition within the squad now so we are in a good position.”

New signings Pavel Porgrebnyak, Danny Guthrie, Garath McCleary, Adrian Mariappa and Nicky Shorey all played for Reading in Portugal in front of a decent following of Royals fans.

Right-back Chris Gunter, who rolled his ankle in training, wasn’t fit in time to play any of the three friendlies.

And Zingarevich was impressed by the number of fans who flew out to Portugal to see their side in action.

He said: “The people really like football so they follow their teams wherever they go, which is great to see.

“It is good for everybody. It is good for the players to realise that there is a lot of responsibility on them to perform.

"We are all really looking forward to the whole season, but of course we are concentrating on the first game (against Stoke City on August 18).

“It is at home so hopefully our fans will help us as well.”

</p> <p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">And Zingarevich also reminded fans that this season will be all about survival and building on the foundations laid by McDermott.</p> <p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">He added: “Every game is going to be really difficult in this division but we are quite confident after what we managed to achieved at the end of last season.</p> <p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">“We have added to our group so hopefully it will be a good season for us.</p> <p xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> “Really we will just continue to look towards the next game and try to win every game like we have done before and I am sure that will do us good.” <br /> </p>